Talk:Cleta Mitchell

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Clara Mitchell

At footnotes 26 and 27, change settlement negotiation (incorrect) to conversation (correct). There was nothing to settle or negotiate; incorrect characterization of phone call. Tcohn01 (talk) 14:59, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Point taken. Done. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 15:05, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

--- RE: "There was nothing to settle or negotiate"

The case being negotiated was this one, filed Dec 31, 2020: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.285271/gov.uscourts.gand.285271.2.0_2.pdf

Per footnote 27, the call took place on Jan 2 while the forgoing case was pending before the U.S. District court for Northern District of Georgia. As an aside, lawyers do at times engage in settlement negotiations before filing cases and sometimes after cases are disposed (e.g. to seek a compromise in light of probable appeal). But this particular call was about active litigation.

It's both correct and more precise to note that this phone conversation was a settlement negotiation in the context of ongoing litigation. This is expressly stated by one of the participating attorneys, Kurt Hilbert at 53:05 in the WaPo released recording(https://youtube.com/VIJU3M-kKhI?t=3175) and in also noted in the published transcripts (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-georgia-call-heres-the-complete-transcript-11609734179?mod=hp_minor_pos20):

"We would like to sit down with your office and we can do it for ***purposes of settlement and compromise just like this phone call*** just to deal with that limited category of votes" (emphasis mine)

And this comment by Mr. Meadows earlier on also frames the entire conversation as a settlement negotiation:

"And so, Mr. Secretary, I was hopeful that, you know, in a spirit of cooperation and compromise, is there something that we can at least have a discussion to look at some of these allegations to find a path forward that’s less litigious?"

That the conversation was a settlement conference is a true fact and provides useful context to the reader about Ms. Mitchell's role in the call as a professional advocate. Tdreid (talk) 03:56, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Tdreid: Can you offer any reliable third party sources calling the phone call a settlement negotiation? That would be more convincing than a couple of statements in the conversation from people who may well have their own motives for characterizing their efforts that way. -- Pemilligan (talk) 16:34, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

@Pemilligan: I'll have to look further into 3rd party sources. At the time that I made the edit the only supporting citation was to the primary source(s) (recordings & transcript). As a person familiar with litigation in both a civil and administrative law context it's fairly straightforward. The entire call sounds to me exactly like a settlement conference and nothing else. I'm confident some reliable 3rd parties will have noticed. I'll update when I've had time to find them.

@Tdreid: At what point does a discussion become a compromise or settlement negotiation? Looking at literature on the topic, I found this:

• Unfortunately, there is no bright line as to when a claim is “disputed,” or at what point discussions become “compromise negotiations.”

@Pemilligan: The cited source is about evidentiary rules, which is a bit inside baseball for the question at hand. Nevertheless, for attorneys and jurists, the absence of a bright line rule refers to not having clear, widely adopted criteria that a court a will apply to sort out the arguable edge cases. It does not mean there are no clear cut situations. This is a clear cut situation. To consider one of the nearby examples from that source:

"For example, does a dispute exist when contracting parties meet to state conflicting positions that, depending on the outcome of their discussion, could result in litigation, or are these preliminary discussions mere business communications rather than negotiations covered by Rule 408?"

The "ifyness" mentioned arises when a suit has not yet been filed. It's clear a dispute exists once litigation has commenced, which is what happened here.

As for whether it's a compromise negotiation, from the recorded call and transcript there is no evidence that it as anything else. As mentioned one party, which seems to be ( and has been reported as) the party that asked for the call expressly characterized it that way. The other side at no point not disputes this characterization, including Ryan Germany who is an attorney. Moreover the president and president's lawyers are asking for information and discovery specifically related to their case. The Ga Secretary of State and his side are declining those requests and providing their rationale. That's negotiation. Moreover, at least one compromise was reached during the conversation, the agreement between Hilbert and Germany to set up a discussion to focus on "four categories that have already been mentioned by the president that have actually hard numbers of 24,149 votes that were counted illegally."

@Tdreid: If both parties characterized the conversation as a settlement negotiation, you would have a stronger argument. But Hilbert is an attorney for Trump. One party. Did the other party at any point acknowledge that the conversation was a compromise and settlement negotiation? I do not see that in the transcript. Most reliable sources characterize it as a "conversation" (bolding my own):

• The Guardian article description: Conversation between president and Georgia’s secretary of state laid bare Trump’s determination to cling on to power

@Pemilligan: It definitely is a conversation. More precisely it's a settlement negotiation. I agree many journalistic sources overlook this fact, perhaps owning to it being outside their expertise or could be they're editorializing by choosing to downplay the fact (or both). Either can color the relibility of such sources on this specific point. I'll look for some sources from the legal field.Tdreid (talk) 19:23, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

• Washington Post: In the hour-long conversation on Jan. 2 [...]
• NBC News: Trump's conversation with Raffensperger prompted a pair of House Democrats to send a letter Monday urging FBI Director Christopher Wray to open a criminal investigation, saying they "believe the president engaged in solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes."
• Raffensperger himself: "It was a private conversation as far as I was concerned," he said. "And he broke privacy when he put out a tweet - but the tweet was false."

Beyond that, the settlement negotiation claim appears to be disputed:

• But the recording contains no such negotiations, and the call did not include lawyers for individuals Trump’s campaign has sued.

@Pemilligan: This is simply an inaccurate statement by AJC. Brad Raffensperger was a defendant in the litigation linked above. Ryan Germany is General Counsel for the Georgia Secretary of State, an attorney for that defendant. Misstatements of this sort illustrate reason to be skeptical of otherwise reliable sources on the particular points Tdreid (talk) 19:23, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

And it appears this characterization is the subject of pending lawsuit?

• After the audio of a conference call was leaked to the press, in which lame-duck President Donald Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to ‘find votes’ to help him overturn Joe Biden’s victory, it is being reported that the desperate Republican is now looking to sue.

@Pemilligan: This article only says that more litigation over the release of the call may arise, but does not point to any further case that has been filed. As far as I've found the characterization itself is not the subject of a pending lawsuit. It wouldn't necessarily require new litigation. Motions arguing whether or not leaking the call violated rules could have been brought up before the judge in the _Trump v Kemp_ case mentioned above. However that case closed on January 8th, 2021. Although it's an arguable point, I suspect it won't be pursued and the question will fade into obscurity. 19:23, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Since the characterization is disputed and there is no clear evidence that it is objectively a settlement negotiation, we should probably not call it a "settlement negotiation". --Elephanthunter (talk) 18:57, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

References

@Elephanthunter: I'd contend the primary source is objectively clear, per my replies above. Further that the third party sources which downplay it being a settlement conference are not reliable on this point. Nevertheless, I'll endeavor to expand the support Tdreid (talk) 19:23, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

@Tdreid: Please review Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Editing others' comments, particularly where it reads,

Generally, you should not break up another editor's text by interleaving your own replies to individual points. This confuses who said what and obscures the original editor's intent. In your own posts, you may wish to use the {{Talk quotation}} or {{Talkquote}} templates to quote others' posts.

Your recent edit put most of your text throughout the previous text by User:Elephanthunter, and for some reason you seemed to think you were replying to me. I've added some indenting to try to make it all less confusing. Please remember to add edits after what you're replying to, not within, and please use better indenting. -- Pemilligan (talk) 23:37, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer to the reference. It's been quite a while since I engaged in this format. I'll try to sort it out once I've reviewed that.

Far from bold, I didn't expect this to be controversial. Thanks for patience with my formatting. Tdreid (talk) 00:07, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Connections to the Council for National Policy

Shouldn't Mitchell's connections to the Council for National Policy be mentioned in this article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 02:11, 26 December 2021 (UTC)